I am sure there are still possibilities for Revival – although I’m not sure if sales figures have been released or not, so it’s hard to say what the future holds for the company. I mean, Revival is and always was more of a passion project than one driven by profit, but naturally bills and staff need to be paid to continue with it.

AFAIK multiplayer upgrades are unlikely, unless they decided to release the source at some point and allow the community to work on it.

Ya gotta pay the bills one way or another. Revival’s a cool little passion project for just about everyone there, and Volition is a guaranteed steady paycheck. There’s no law against having two jobs. Heck, I have three. I think you’re overreacting. Or you’re as possessive as a mountain lion, but either way, relax. 😛

Hey guys, following up on this with a pretty large post from Matt Toschlog on behalf of himself and Mike Kulas in the Discord server. This is not necessarily a final development update, but all signs are beginning to point that way ahead of the X1 and DLC2 prep and launch:

_______________________________________

For some time, we’ve wanted to provide an update on Revival and Overload. Some of us got busy and we kept waiting for the Xbox version to be done (update: it was submitted on Monday for approval), but here’s the status.

We founded Revival and built a team to make Overload, not really planning to create a lasting company that would build more games. We wanted to have fun creating a spiritual successor to Descent, and we’re very happy with the results.

We would have liked to do more with Overload — more DLC drops (we will do another community DLC pack), new features, maybe a sequel. Those things look very unlikely now. We’re gratified by Overload’s strong user reviews and we love the community that has formed around the game. Nonetheless, sales have been disappointing and can’t justify much additional work on the project.

We’re still spending time on Overload, but most of us have moved on. Roughly half the full-time team members are now working at Volition. (Props to Chelsea and Ed who leveraged their Overload experience into Associate Producer positions!) Luke is back to working full-steam at Radian Games. (Check out Scorcher, coming later this month!) Matt is working on ideas for a new (game-related) project. Mike had planned on loafing for several months and then deciding what to do, but suddenly and unexpectedly found himself rejoining Volition as General Manager.

We are proud of Overload and have many fond memories. The Kickstarter, which was as all-consuming as many had warned, was very satisfying in the end. We both enjoyed being (slightly rusty) programmers for the first time in years, and it meant a lot to be part of such a talented team. We were gratified by the community of both newcomers and Descent fans still committed a game we created over 20 years ago. And it’s particularly meaningful to see team members who got a career boost out of their work on Overload.

Hey guys, following up on this with a pretty large post from Matt Toschlog on behalf of himself and Mike Kulas in the Discord server. This is not necessarily a final development update, but all signs are beginning to point that way ahead of the X1 and DLC2 prep and launch:

_______________________________________

For some time, we’ve wanted to provide an update on Revival and Overload. Some of us got busy and we kept waiting for the Xbox version to be done (update: it was submitted on Monday for approval), but here’s the status.

We founded Revival and built a team to make Overload, not really planning to create a lasting company that would build more games. We wanted to have fun creating a spiritual successor to Descent, and we’re very happy with the results.

We would have liked to do more with Overload — more DLC drops (we will do another community DLC pack), new features, maybe a sequel. Those things look very unlikely now. We’re gratified by Overload’s strong user reviews and we love the community that has formed around the game. Nonetheless, sales have been disappointing and can’t justify much additional work on the project.

We’re still spending time on Overload, but most of us have moved on. Roughly half the full-time team members are now working at Volition. (Props to Chelsea and Ed who leveraged their Overload experience into Associate Producer positions!) Luke is back to working full-steam at Radian Games. (Check out Scorcher, coming later this month!) Matt is working on ideas for a new (game-related) project. Mike had planned on loafing for several months and then deciding what to do, but suddenly and unexpectedly found himself rejoining Volition as General Manager.

We are proud of Overload and have many fond memories. The Kickstarter, which was as all-consuming as many had warned, was very satisfying in the end. We both enjoyed being (slightly rusty) programmers for the first time in years, and it meant a lot to be part of such a talented team. We were gratified by the community of both newcomers and Descent fans still committed a game we created over 20 years ago. And it’s particularly meaningful to see team members who got a career boost out of their work on Overload.

I mean, it was pretty obvious from day one to be honest that Overload was never going to make a huge impact on the gaming community. It was always a niche following, and to be honest I think the name ‘Overload’ was a poor choice, as to this day you cannot just type Overload in Google and get any relevant results without adding more details such as PC, Game etc. Either way we got a great game, and it will NOT go unnoticed as people are chattering about it. It’s very highly rated and is bound to go down in the hall of fame as an underappreciated gem.

I’m not so sure I can agree on the name being a poor choice. What about “Descent”? It’s kind of the same name concept. What do we do in that game? We descend down to the reactor or to the boss robot and destroy it in order to cause a system overload. It’s a descent down to the goal, hence the name “Descent”.

I guess you can see where I’m headed next, but, what do we do in Overload? We destroy the reactor or the boss robot in order to cause a system overload. Hence the name Overload.

Google “Descent”. It’s the same kind of thing. You have to say “Descent game” in order to get results that are relevant to the game.

I’m sad to hear that the Revival experiment is over, although I’m glad that they gave us Overload, pretty much everything I ever hoped for in a modern Descent game. So thank you, Revival, for that. I was hoping that we might see another Freespace-style game in the future, if not a sequel to Overload, but that looks unlikely now.

I found it very frustrating to see so few professional reviews of Overload. None of the main sites that I visit reviewed it, many didn’t even mention that it had been released. This is the reality of the industry now, there are more games than ever being released and yet most gaming outlets concentrate on the same handful of popular titles. If they cut their Destiny, PUBG, Fortnite and <insert latest top seller> content down by 20% they’d be able to review dozens more indie games instead. I’ll be even more frustrated if Descent (2019) gets the kind of coverage that Overload missed out on simply because it has publisher backing.

Anyway, I feel confident that Overload will be seen in the future as an overlooked classic, with people wondering why it didn’t do so well. Sadly I’m afflicted with an appreciation of games that fall outside the mainstream, so I’m used to this dagger-to-the-heart where games I love often fail to perform commercially. Then again, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Kind of sad but as someone said, ya gotta pay the bills. Bottom line, we got a great Descent game, one that a lot of us have been waiting for for twenty years. Think about all the rumors we’ve (by “we’ve” I mean the old-timers who played the originals) had to endure for all those years, you remember the old Descent IV rumors and the “these guys are making a new Descent game and those guys are making a new Descent game” that never happened. I’m happy we finally got it and wish the best to the Revival team.

It’s very sad indeed, specially taking in account that for some people like me this was simply the BEST game of all of 2018. But what we can do, the market has changed, we are not in the 90s anymore. Modern gamers nowadays prefer tedious battle royale games with stupid and ridiculous dances instead of a well designed 6dof experience that truly uses all three dimensions, but hey, that’s the way it is, and this is a bussiness, so if (unfortunately) there are not enough sales, there’s no need to continue investing much more on the project.

Thankfully there are plenty of good games still around, but it’s such a shame they don’t get that much attention either (perhaps except for the new Doom games, at least the one from 2016 was pretty good and got the reception it deserved)

Anyway, as krayzkrok said, the guys at Revival made some of us infinitely happy. Personally, I had a very rough 2018, and to be honest, Overload was one of the few things on the year that made me feel genuinely joyful. Even if there’s no more development on Overload, I’m glad I had the opportunity to play it as it is, and will keep playing it more and more, as much as a play Descent on a daily basis. As a hardcore Descent fan, and considering Overload is also Descent at its core, it will be at the top of my game list permanently.

So thanks a lot Revival for such a superb piece of videogame art, you made one of the best games I played on latest years! Best wishes to all the team!